Rock-Paper-Scissors Combat
The UO combat system currently has pretty good balance among the two principle combat groups -- mages and melee warriors -- but still has many shortcomings. In particular, the archery class is not competitive in most PVP combat, while most of the other character classes (eg, tamers, bards, and rogues) are barely functional outside of PVM. My suggestion here is to revamp the core combat system for more of a rock-paper-scissors (RPS) model, namely by creating three principle classes of combat (melee, ranged, and magery), creating balance among these three classes, and directing character classes into a particular combat class.
For starters, the three character classes that I propose are:
- Magery: strong versus melee but weak versus ranged
attacks. This would be primarily achieved by allowing mages to cast an Area
Protection spell that created a field of energy encircling the mage (the field
would encompass a 3x3 tile area around the mage). The energy barrier would
prohibit living matter from passing through, thus prohibiting melee
warriors and other living creatures (including pets) from making contact with
the mage, but would not prohibit ranged attacks from archers or other mages
(certain two-handed pole weapons could also hit the mage, so melee warriors
would not be completely disabled).
Casting this spell would lower the mage's resists by 20 points in each category, increasing their susceptibility to the attacks that weren't stopped by the energy barrier. Furthermore, casting the spell would carry an initial mana cost (preferably equal to a 7th circle spell), and would also require mana to maintain (preferably in the form of a -10 mana regen rate) with the field collapsing when mana reached zero. In this regard, only those mages with very high regeneration rates would be able to maintain the spell for long periods of time, but everyday mages could use the spell in emergency situations.
The Area Protection spell could not be used while mounted (except with very small mounts). Furthermore, the spell would block recall/teleport/gate spells to an area that had any living creature in the target 3x3 grid. The spell would not be blocked by unliving material (eg, house walls and such). Whether or not undead creatures (eg, liches) would be affected is an open question. - Ranged: strong versus magery, but weak versus
melee. This would be primarily achieved by increasing the rate of fire for
ranged weapons, and by changing how parry works with archery.
On the first point, mages can currently simply heal between arrow shots, which makes archery pretty much useless against most mages, and increasing the rate-of-fire for archers would already put most mages at a signifcant disadvantage. Meanwhile, mages that had Area Protection cast would also take significantly more damage from each attack that got through.
In order to exaggerate weakness against melee fignhters, ranged weapons should have their chance-to-block formula use the parry skill rather than using archery skill (currently an attack compares the attacker's weapons skill to the target's weapon skill, and I am suggesting that ranged weapons should have an explicit comparison value of zeroo, and that the parry skill level should be used for this check instead). In this regard, a warrior that closed in on an archer would hit the target 100% of the time, unless the archer had enough parry skill to deflect some percentage of the attacks, and even then, that would only delay the inevitable.
Furthermore, the parry skill should get a slight boost against ranged weapons, with the size of the boost depending on the size of the shield (a heater shield would logically block many more arrows than a buckler). At optimal rates, a full-sized heater shield would get a 2x blocking rate against ranged weapons over the base blocking rate, while a buckler would get no boost, thus allowing a fully-tanked warrior (with sufficient strenth to carry a heater) to walk right up to an archer and dispatch the target with ease (a side effect I would like to see would be for archers to be able to equip bucklers, but that's a different essay). - Melee: strong versus ranged attacks, but weak versus magery. This is primarily achieved through changes to the combat formula, and the introduction of the Area Protection spell, both of which are described above.
Let's examine how these changes would affect certain kinds of character classes:
First of all, parry would become very popular as a skill, since archers would need it to even survive against melee warriors, and mages would need it to defend against ranged attacks.
Hybrid characters would be more interesting, but not necessarily more effective. In particular, tank mages that use combat weapons would become less usable given that they could not have Area Protection active and do melee damage. Melee/archers could be very powerful, but would have to find room for two combat skills AND parry in order to survive, which means dropping at least one other skill from the typical template. Archer/mages have the most potential here, but it is unlikely that they would have the mana-regeneration and dexterity needed to play to their full potential (they'd have no room for hit-points left...).
Tamers and bards would become more restricted, in that mobs would not be effective against mages that had the Area Protection spell active (exceptions exist for stuff like fire-breath and area affects). However, they would continue to be viable against archers and melee characters (to the extent that they are viable now). This plays pretty well against the current weakness that mages have versus tamers... Furthermore, tamers and bards could make use of the Area Protection spell themselves, improving their defensive capabilities, which is a significant shortcoming for them in the current PVP model. In short, tamers and bards would become more effective, but not overpowering.
When combined with some of the other combat-related proposals, this has the basis for a solid foundation upon which a robust PVP system can be built.